IDA singled out the zoo’s treatment of a 44-year-old elephant named Happy, who was kept alone in a separate area for almost a decade, supposedly to protect her from other aggressive elephants.

"It’s dangerous to keep her with the elephants, and it’s dangerous to keep her alone," says the report’s author, Dr. Toni Frohoff. "She should be completely removed from the zoo. Why can’t they just send Happy to a sanctuary now where she’d have a happy ending instead of rotting away where she is?"

Happy has been at Bronx Zoo since 1977 after being captured as a baby in Asia. Zoo authorities have since decided to discontinue its elephant program and will not replace the animals when they die.

Despite this, IDA has asked people to not visit Bronx Zoo for as long as the elephant exhibit remains open: "Every ticket they buy is perpetuating the suffering of the elephants there."